The Flavor Of Tom Coughlin's Gum

Jeff: I still can’t believe that crazy Russian bastard
from the Cowboys the other night.

David: I am always and everywhere for Jewish defensive
linemen, but Olshansky doing his Igor Stomp after holding Ahmad
Bradshaw to a four-yard gain was just the most amazingly Cowboys
thing.

Jeff: Yeah, the announcers even called him out for it,
but he’d also done it a minute or two earlier. Down by 18 with 7:00
left in the game and he makes a tackle and celebrates it.

David: Mike Tirico will put you on blast for that.

Jeff: It’s like Roy Williams last week against the
Vikings. Gets a first down with 11 seconds left and gets all cocky.
That is historically the main problem with the Cowboys. You could
be stepping on their face with a hiking boot, and they would be
like, “Had enough yet, bitch?”

David: Kind of have to admire the pathological cockiness,
in a way. Even with Jon Kitna and his tiny ball-bearing eyes at QB
for the rest of the year.

Jeff: Keith Brooking so wishes it was 1977. And he drove
a Cadillac Eldorado ragtop with horns on it.

David: He’d get elected mayor of Dallas if he was on a
good team. That state is very ready to embrace a gritty white
linebacker type.

Jeff: If we’re talking EYES, Giants head coach Tom
Coughlin looks like an old Golden Retriever with like 46 cataracts.
His default reaction or emotion is anger because his senses are so
bad that everything in his life takes him by surprise.

David: My greatest aspiration as a football-watcher is to
see Tom Coughlin smile someday. It seems more and more unlikely,
because he just gets more and more Coughlin-y as he ages. He looks
like he shaves four times per day. For some reason it’s hilarious
to me that Coughlin chews gum.

Jeff: It has to be some kind of medicated gum, for ulcers
or hemmerhoids. His grandkids are always trying to steal it from
him. And he is exasperated, “You Don’t WANT this.”

David: I’m trying to imagine a gum that would be
draconian and Jesuitical enough for him? Does it taste like
communion wafer?

Jeff: It doesn’t have any fucking flavor. It tastes like
sacrifice. Hard work.

David: Salt-flavored?

Jeff: Negative-flavored.

David: “I just want it to taste like it does when it
comes out of the tree.”

Jeff: It comes in plain white cardboard. They are winning
games, but he just seems senile to me “Tommmmmmm, put your sweater
on. YOU COACH THE GIANTS…THE FOOTBALL TEAM…Gary will give you a
ride over to the practice facility.”

David: He’s becoming so Coughlin-y in his dotage that
he’s issuing orders that don’t make sense. “Everyone must arrive
one day early for every meeting. Also, instead of watching game
tape today we’re going to watch the episode where Matlock defends a
bluesman falsely accused of murder.”

Jeff: Whoever their defensive coordinator is must get the
defense to think the opposing QB is Coughlin. “Okay, pretend it is
Tom. He just stepped out of the shower. He is toweling off. Humming
to himself. He has no idea you are coming at him full blast.”

Jeff: He is like Phil Jackson, giving out books to
players…

David: “Furthermore, all meetings will begin at a time of
my choosing, which I will not announce until I have decided upon
it. You must be there before I announce it.”

Jeff: Except he gives the kicker a DVD of Beaches.
“In order to learn something about your own heart, you must watch
Beaches. Wings need wind, you sonsofbitches. Now go beat
those Panthers.”

David: He leaves two tickets for Barbara Hershey at every
road game.

Jeff:
Kevin Gilbride looks like one of Popeye’s foes. “You don’t
wantsk to fucksks with Old Dutchksk” And his trick is beating
people up with various plumbing implements. “Oooh, you shouldn’t
have stolen his taffy!”

David: I guess he’s good at his job? I look at him and
just assume he’s not. He looks like a high school history teacher
who gets World War I and World War II mixed up. “Which one was
against the French?”

Jeff: I could spend a month on bad coach fashion. I am
getting awfully goddamn sick of Dolphins coach Tony Sparano in
those sunglasses and Starter jacket. He looks like Rocky
Rococo on the sideline. The National Indigestion Foundation
presents the Tony Sparano sideline poster.

David: With a stern warning about shrimp.

Jeff: How to tell if a loved one is digesting a kebab
wrong.

David: The Giants do not have the NFL’s most obviously
physically unappealing coaching staff, though. The Raiders are
sticking to their policy of only hiring coaches who look like strip
club patrons, owners or “security staff.”

Jeff: Tom Cable looks like he enjoys taking his pants off
inappropriately, something with which I suppose the State of
California will one day concur.

David: Having to wear real suits again suits might be a
good thing. Poor Andy Reid always looks like he’s wearing a
snowsuit. Just an uninterrupted skein of green nylon, every
week.

Jeff: I’d love it if they could wear suits again. Though
I would also love to see Andy Reid in a skintight Riddler
costume.

David: Make it so he had to wear a blazer and he might
stop eating massive tuna melts for breakfast. It could save a life.
Romeo Crennel is in KC now, right? There was a guy who knew how to
wear a team-logo polo shirt. I felt like you could somehow always
see his belly button through it. I hated it. So, how was your
weekend? Did you watch any football matches?

Jeff: My favorite highlight and perhaps my fave play of
the season was Reggie Hodges fake punt for Cleveland in New Orleans
against the world champion Saints.

David: I am always, always in favor of 68-yard rushing
plays by punters. I wish I’d seen that happen live. How long did it
take? It’d take me 15 minutes to run 68 yards. I’d stop for
lunch.

Jeff: He’s only been cut from the practice
squad of every NFL team. He may have still had his Arthur
Treacher’s uniform on underneath his, um, Browns uniform. I guess
Cleveland figured, you know, a lot of our offensive skill guys have
been getting knocked the fuck out, why not send our punter
unencumbered up the middle of the field? There haven’t been enough
compound fractures of the face this season. But, Hodges is kind of
a truck.

David: By punter standards. And thus by human standards,
I guess.

Jeff: To me, a punter always looks a little like George
Washington or George Will running. “I will now locomote my lower
meat flanks in the Olde Fashioned Style.”

David: You know what struck me most about that highlight,
if I can take it back to Coach’s Fashion Corner for a minute? Eric
Mangini has lost weight!

Jeff: For real?

David: He used to look like a very worried, kind of mean
version of the Pillsbury Doughboy. Now he looks like Harvey Keitel
circa Mean Streets.

Jeff: To me he looked like one of those angry dolls that
adult marketers try to tell you is cute, but that you secretly lock
in Tinker Toy prisons because you’re prejudiced.

David: I don’t think of Cleveland as a place people go to
lose weight, but it’s working for him. I thought they gave you an
IV bag of melted cheddar when you got off the plane. If Holmgren
has lost weight I’m going to be pissed. Skinny Holmgren would look
like Martin Mull.

Jeff: Maybe they BRO-ed up. “We both need to do this!”
There’s a local Weight Watchers spot of them running around
Cleveland while Morrissey’s “You’re The One For Me, Fatty,” plays
in the background. I wonder if Mangini has changed his kid’s middle
name now.

David: It’s no longer “Ricotta?”

Jeff: It was BRETT, born during the 2008 Jets season.

David: Oh man. Good look, there. He can always tell the
kid he was named after Brett Ratliff. “He was on our scout team
that year. He tried very hard.” The new developments in the Favre
case are worse and worse. Like, he’s
negotiating with the NY Post‘s sports page now. “Maybe
some of that penis in the photograph was mine, but certainly not
all of it.”

Jeff: I think Charlie Sheen just gave Favre his get out
of jail free card, at least in terms of the Post. My big
question, after watching Sunday Night’s (most watched ever Sunday
Night game, btw) Packers-Vikings game, is how does someone like Bob
Costas, who is like the homespun, earnest St. Louis-ian,
essentially the for-profit version of Ken Burns, now find himself
seated with Mike Florio, every Sunday night?

David: Uneasily. Is how he is seated with him.

Jeff: Bob: “I am here for the majesty and spectacle of
the game.” Mike: “I am here because I’m hearing that there is an
AFC WR who has gotten a teenage boy pregnant.”

David: When people who have never read blogs and fear
them talk about The Bloggers, they are talking about Mike
Florio.

Jeff: He’s like a rat on an overturned sailboat. It’s
like having the guy from TMZ on NBC.

David: “An informed source told me that Albert
Haynesworth cried at the ending of The Rock.” Costas must be
on a massive dose of anti-nausea medication. Because no one would
hate Florio’s shtick more than him.

Jeff: This might be the example when I have to teach my
children about compromise. As if my own life won’t have yielded
enough material.

Jeff: “Tonight at halftime, we carve a pumpkin with Y.A.
Tittle’s wife Janet, who will then cook the seeds and deliver them
to the orphanage.” I’m sure the NBC suits were crunching the
numbers and were like, “Doing this show is fuckin’ expensive. Bob,
if you still want a genuine barbershop quartet to sing your kids to
sleep every night…”

David: Maximum pomp…Priorities, I guess.

Jeff: “If you want an actual ragtime band to perform
while your hair is dyed chestnut and styled like Kate Jackson’s in
“Charlie’s Angels”… we have to up the salacious ante.”

Jeff: I guess he’s encountered enough high octane jerks
on TV anyway. That whole Buzz Bissinger thing. Buzz is a brilliant,
gifted writer and reporter. And he has the personality of a
cornered badger who’s gone through a Mt. Hood-sized pile of special
K. Less “real-time” exposure to that guy, please.

Jeff: I merely suggested that he was playing Frisbee in a
Dead parking lot when summoned to QB the Bills, to assert that his
priorities, long-term, are probably greater than NFL football. He’s
probably unassuming about it all. He could have been in a lab
coming up with a vaccine to save us from something, and quietly
took off his lab coat, and said, “I suppose I could play a few
downs. Do we really need to go to Seattle to do this though,
guys?”

David: Any other actual football things to discuss?

Jeff: When Ben Roethlisberger fumbles it is not really a
fumble, if his image is still in the process of being repaired. All
over the NFL it seemed like the refs were all, “We don’t want you
guys to hit helmet to helmet when we’re busy trying to fuck up all
these other rules for you.” Forgotten in the Favre drama is that
CUTLER threw four INTs to the same guy!! (Someone asked us to talk
about the Redskins.)

David: The Redskins need to play against Jay Cutler more
often. I still think their roster is made up by Daniel Snyder just
going through a stack of 2002 Upper Deck football cards and being
like, “Is Marion Butts still playing?” My Redskins fan friends
swear it’s not like that anymore, but they still have Joey
Galloway, who voted for Gerald Ford. And London Fletcher, who
played for the LA Rams.

Jeff: Snyder is the guy in your fantasy league who drafts
Edgerrin James.

David: Except if that guy in your fantasy league also
owned Johnny Rockets. Is there a better chain for Snyder to own
than universally unloved retro-burger nightmare trans-fat empire
Johnny Rockets?

Jeff: I love Joey Galloway. He probably has a son who
fought in Desert Storm. Or is at least going to be on an NFL roster
next year.

Jeff: Which brings me to my Spike Jonze movie.

David: Oh, I’m glad we got to the Spike Jonze movie.

Jeff: I think it would be cool to see a movie about
basketball where it was the NCAA tournament or something and there
were like four Shawn Kemp Jr’s facing off in the Final Four.
Playing against each other. I know that is like the knee-jerk
saddest Peter Vecsey sort of thing to pick on that guy about. But I
like the John Malkovich meta-ness of it. The surrealness. Not as a
commentary about not using rubbers. I think it would be awesome. I
think there’s a real story to it.

David: We may eventually see an all Antonio
Cromartie-related NFL defensive secondary.

Jeff: Unrelated: I wish Jon Gruden would get another head
coaching gig.

David: I actually like him as a broadcaster, but I’m a
little worried for him. I feel like he stays up really late
breaking down tape, but he’s not coaching anymore. So he’s just
watching episodes of “The Millionaire Matchmaker” and pausing it
every few seconds to comment on everyone’s hair.

Jeff: I feel bad that he has to be next to Jaworski, who
has the same bluster, but is way less fun. He announces like he is
trying to sell you insurance. Steve Mariucci and Gruden should be
dual coaches somewhere.

David: Mariucci was always one of my favorites. One of
the few NFL coaches who seemed like a legitimately happy,
chilled-out guy. Every time the camera was on Mariucci he was
grinning like he was in an Olive Garden commercial or something.
You know that kind of manic happiness they go for there? Where
everyone busts up laughing when someone says, “I really love this
salad!” Tears streaming down their faces, everyone hugging and
looking a little scared almost.

David:Mariucci should spend some time with his friends
and family, stay out of coaching. Gruden should spend less time
with friends and family, probably. They’re tired of him making them
sit through marathon film sessions.

Jeff: He could accurately critique anything, I think.
“Now when you’re writing traffic tickets out of a booklet like
this, you’re just not going to get the same efficacy, as say…”

David: Stop making your buddies suffer through four-hour
dissections of some 13-year-old’s YouTube defense of Justin Bieber,
man. I like the idea of a “Gruden On” late-night show somewhere on
cable. Very detailed, very confident critiques of different things
every week. “If there’s one misconception people have about
omelettes…”

Jeff: “See I knew you’d be using that kind of skillet and
here’s why it is wrong…Well not only that, but you started out with
your burner on medium. Then you introduced some of the most
middling cookware. Did you know this was made in Sri Lanka?”